


Sepia

by SilverMyfanwy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - World War II, Character Death, Drinking, F/M, Fluff, Teen Romance, Teenagers, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-05 06:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16362446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMyfanwy/pseuds/SilverMyfanwy
Summary: There's a sepia photo in the attic withFai and Hazel in uniform- 1943written on the back in elegant handwriting.





	Sepia

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: ALCOHOLIC PARENT

Apple climbed over an old armchair to a large cardboard box sitting behind it. She opened the box and pulled out the first thing she found inside it. It was covered in a thick layer of dust. Pulling her sleeve over her hand, she wiped the dust off and coughed as it flew into the air. She squinted and made out the faint word ‘Album’.

“Grandma!” she called out. “What’s this?”

Hazel, who had long grey hair and wrinkled brown skin, walked over to her.

“It’s a photo album.” Hazel said, taking it out of her granddaughter’s hands and opening it. On the first page was a sepia photo of a teenage girl standing next to a tall teenage boy built like a wrestler.

“That’s me and Grandpa.” Hazel told Apple.

Apple looked at the photo inquisitively. “Really?”

Hazel nodded. “We were young once, too.”

“How old are you in that photo?”

“I’m 14, Grandpa’s 16.”

“What’s that you’re wearing?”

“Normal clothes.”

“They don’t look like normal clothes!”

Hazel laughed. “They were normal clothes back then. Times have changed.”

“Is that why you’re wearing that silly dress? Because the times hadn’t changed yet then?”

“That silly dress was what all girls were expected to wear back then.”

“What’s that Grandpa’s wearing?” Apple asked.

“His uniform.”

“What’s his uniform for?” Apple looked closer at the picture. “Is it for the army?”

Hazel nodded. “Yes.”

“Was Grandpa in the army?”

“For a bit. He was in World War Two.”

“That was the really big war, wasn’t it?”

“It was a very big war, yes.”

“Did he shoot someone?”

“No.”

“Did he get injured and you were his nurse? Is that how you met?”

Hazel chuckled. “No. I was too young to be a nurse.”

“How did you meet him, then?”

“I lived in the cottage his grandma rented to my mum.”

“Did he go to France?”

Hazel shook her head. “He stayed here. It was his job to guard the message box.”

“What’s a message box?”

Hazel furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m not sure if that was its proper name, but it was a box-hut thing where codemakers would go to send messages to the headquarters in London. It had all the code making equipment inside and Grandpa had to stand outside and guard it.”

~

Hazel had nothing more than the blanket tucked under her arm, the contents of her satchel and the clothes she was wearing. She felt extremely self-conscious as the boy in the big farmhouse watched her out of an upstairs window. He noticed her watching him and quickly stepped out of view.

Marie was arguing with the man who had driven them there in his cart. “I haven’t got anything to pay you with! I told you that at the start!”

Hazel sighed and began to walk down the muddy track to their cottage. Her mum would catch her up later.

She wanted desperately to scuff her shoes in the mud, but didn’t, for fear of the beating she would get if she did. Her satchel swung from her arm and the wind made her fair fly out behind her. The cottage came into sight and Hazel looked at it with interest. It was small, with a thatched roof and a brick chimney. She walked up the path in the heavily overgrown front garden to the wooden front door with a large metal knocker. She pushed the door open hesitantly, it was unlocked, and stepped inside. It was damp, dark and reeked of something awful. Hazel hated it straight away.

  
It was cold and spiders hung from cobwebs in every available nook and cranny. The floor was made of compacted dirt and weeds had found a way through in places. Hazel stepped further into the cottage and then screamed as something flapped into her hair and then out the door.

She turned around to see what it was and saw a bat flying away from the house. She bit back another scream and when she heard something scuttle across the floor, she ran out of the house.

Hazel sat outside the house after that, waiting for Marie to arrive. It was half an hour or more until she came with nostrils flaring, eyes seething and footsteps heavy.  
“Why aren’t you cleaning the house?” she shouted when she saw Hazel sitting in the garden.

“There were spiders and I think I heard a rat and a-”

“Never mind!” Marie shouted. “Get in there and start cleaning!”

“But-” Hazel began to cry.

“Get in there and stop crying girl!”

~

Hazel met Frank for the first time two weeks after she moved in. The chimney had caved in, and as their landlady, it was his grandmother’s job to arrange for it to be fixed.  
It had been three days and no one had yet come to fix it, so Marie had sent Hazel up to the big house to ask why it hadn’t been fixed. Hazel had not wanted to go; the big house scared her and the landlady with her tight grey bun and soul piercing glare scared her even more, but nevertheless, after much shouting and a slap around the face, Hazel found herself trudging up the path through the immaculate front garden to the door.

She gave two feeble raps of the bear head knocker, too shy to do any more. She half-hoped she wouldn’t be heard and then she’d get away without having to face the landlady. Her hopes were dashed when the door creaked open, revealing the boy who had watched her out of the window when she had first arrived.

“Hello.” the boy said shyly.

“H-hello.” Hazel fumbled. “Is, is Ms Zhang in?”

The boy shook his head. He was tall and pudgy and his dark brown eyes seemed strangely sad. “Can I help you with anything?”

Hazel nodded. “When will Ms Zhang be back?”

“Saturday.”

“When will she send someone to fix our chimney?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Hazel looked down, disappointed.

“You could always eat here while you wait for the chimney to be fixed.” the boy said shyly.

“Really?”

The boy nodded and Hazel, forgetting herself, flung her arms around his neck to hug him. “Thank you, thank you!”

She turned and ran all the way down to her cottage to tell Marie the good news.

Marie was furious when she heard. “Tell that boy he needs to get our chimney fixed or I won’t pay the rent!”

“But we can eat in their house! He said!”

“I don’t care what he said I will not eat their food and I will not eat in their house! Go back and tell him to get someone to fix the chimney or I won’t be paying the rent this month!”

Hazel’s life was on a downward spiral for a long time after that day.

Firstly, Marie started drinking. Just a little bit at first, but more and more as time went by. And then she started getting drunk night in, night out, and most days as well.  
Hazel wasn’t as lonely as she had been before, though. She found ways to talk to the boy up at the big house. She discovered that his name was Frank and he was two years older than she was. As Marie’s alcohol problem worsened, Hazel spent more and more time at the big house. After school, she’d walk in through the back door and talk with Ms Zhang for a few moments before going to play in the fields with Frank.

The big house was where Hazel felt safe, where she didn’t have to deal with the bullies at school or a drunk parent at home.

After one particularly trying day at school, during which there had been more harsh words and insults than usual, Hazel came to the big house in tears. She told Ms Zhang about what had happened and how all the other students and teachers treated her. Ms Zhang than sat up straight and told Hazel that she would ‘get your mother to pull you out of that atrocious school and you will be taught here with Frank instead.’

Ms Zhang had walked down to the cottage with Hazel and she had opened the front door only to find Marie lying dead on the floor, a bottle of rum in her hand.

~

Hazel had screamed. Ms Zhang went very pale and had ordered Frank to run and get a doctor from the village. The doctor pronounced Marie dead at the scene and the next thing Hazel knew, she was sitting in Ms Zhang’s office in the big house, being fed cake and hot, sugary tea whilst Ms Zhang telegraphed her lawyer in London about adopting Hazel, as she had no other family.

But before Hazel’s adoption case could go through, war broke out with Germany. Men everywhere began to enlist to fight.

Frank asked his grandmother is he could sign up. She said no, as even now he was only fifteen, but said she would let him work as a guard at one of the code centres she had given the army permission to install on her acres and acres of sprawling land.

He was given a uniform and wore it with pride.

Hazel watched him jealously. She wanted to help too, but Ms Zhang forbid her from joining up to anything so young. She was allowed to knit socks and to take mugs of tea down to the message senders but that was all.

Until one of the local commanders saw her riding a horse.

She was riding Arion, her favourite of all the Zhang horses, and the fastest. They were galloping across the fields and Hazel felt so free she didn’t spot the commander watching her. Ms Zhang’s horses hadn’t been commandeered for the war effort because of their flighty Arab bloodlines. They’d be useless at pulling guns and would kick up such a fuss it wouldn’t be worth taking them to France.

The commander had stalked up the path to ask Ms Zhang where Hazel had learnt to ride. When he heard Hazel had taught herself, he demanded that she be allowed to carry messages across the fields because ‘she is the fastest rider I have ever seen’.

Ms Zhang laughed at him and then stormed off to the stables to ask Hazel how fast she could ride.

“Pretty quick,” Hazel tucked her hair behind her ears.

“Show me.” Ms Zhang stood with hands on hips.

Hazel mounted Arion bareback, galloped away across the fields, then turned and rode back again. She slid off Arion’s back, grinning, with her hair tossed all over the place by the wind.

The next morning, Hazel and Frank set off to work together.

Hazel wasn’t given a uniform but she had a smart navy blue riding skirt and an old white blouse of Frank’s mum’s. The photo was taken that day, by a local reporter who had heard tale of the pair and come to investigate.

“It’s not everyday you see a boy from China in an Englishman’s army uniform an a girl wiv brown skin working for the army,” the reporter wiped his face from the sweat caused by the hot June sun. “An’ I must say, you’re doin’ a mighty fine job, you two are.”

And he took the photo.

~

Hazel told the story to an enraptured Apple. Apple’s older brother Ryan had joined them to hear the tale too.

“So you fought in World War Two?” Apple gasped.

“I didn’t fight. I just did my bit.” Hazel smiled. “Everyone did their bit.”

Apple’s younger sister Sarah popped her head up from behind a cardboard box. She’d been listening in. “Grandma, can I take the photo in to school for show and tell?”

“How about we photocopy it and you take the photocopy in?” the children’s mother suggested from the other side of the attic.

Sarah and Hazel both nodded.

~

“This is my grandma and grandpa in World War Two. It’s a special type of photo called sepia…”


End file.
